He joins the army and is immediately made an officer due to his background and his private education, and he and the other officers (many pages later) often talk about how the death of one of their own is far more significant, important, than the deaths of the tommies. I don’t seek these things out, in fact I (now) actively avoid them, but texts from this period that otherwise have their important sociological and historical benefits and reasons for popularity (like this one, see below) do often sadly have this firm stamp of ESTABLISHMENT stuck on them from the off.īecause Graves is establishment, and not quite as against-the-wall critical of it as he appears to try to project.
Private school gags and jokes and reminiscences, et cetera, of a type there is no need to read in 2014. The first 60/100 pages of the book, before Graves reaches France, I found insufferable. But while Nabokov saw the Russian revolution and ran away, Graves witnessed the start of the First World War and decided to join in. Both men are of a similar age, are similarly respected and canonical, both come from a wealthy background and both men had an event of huge global significance shake them out of their moneyed stupor in their late teens and into something very different. In terms of plot, it bears a surprising resemblance to that of the last book I read, Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory. Except for this, his highly-regarded memoir about his young life and his time in the trenches of the First World War, Goodbye To All That. I have also never read the tome The Greek Myths, which I’ve had a copy of ever since a too boozy, too shouty and too short trip to Athens last Summer. I have never read The White Goddess, my favourite writer’s* favourite book.
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